


we'll name our children (sit back and watch the world go by)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: tell my father (this is my life) [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Character Study, Drabble, Family Feels, Gen, Grace is the mom the UA kids deserve, Grace supports all her children, Grace was a better parent than Reginald Hargreeves ever was, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Motherhood, Names, No Apocalypse, Non-Linear Narrative, Parent-Child Relationship, Robots, Supportive Grace Hargreeves, i stan (1) robot mom, mark that down, robots can be mothers too, she also hates Reginald as much as the kids do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 06:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18005555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Grace loves her children too much. She loved them enough to name them, to give them an identity other than weapons. They were never just numbers to her, even before she helped them choose their names.All she wants is for them to be happy and healthy, and she gives everything she has to make that happen.(A study of how and who Grace Hargreeves loves, and also how and who she doesn't.)





	we'll name our children (sit back and watch the world go by)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Jackie & Wilson" by Hozier.
> 
>  
> 
> I don't know what this is. It doesn't exactly follow the format of the other character studies in this series, but hell, I'm just a little stuck on my Luther and Allison stories and this one was just begging to be written so I hope you guys like it anyway.

_But there's a story behind everything._

_How a picture got on a wall._

_How a scar got on your face._

_Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking._

_But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin._

_**- Mitch Albom** _

 

Grace Hargreeves loves all her children.

-

Grace loves Five despite the fact that he ran away, that he left her with a gaping hole in her programming until Reginald fixed it so she stopped setting an eighth place at the table.

She loves Five because he disobeyed his father, because he was always determined to choose his own path. He ran and ran and ran until they could never catch him, landing on the other side of an Apocalypse Reginald nearly caused by his parenting.

She loves Five because he came back, because he spent forty years trying to save them. He returns from the Apocalypse and he is as tiny as she remembers, as ageless as she is, but he carries such loss in his eyes that her only instinct is to help him.

(When Five appears in her kitchen, she quietly goes and changes the sheets on his empty bed, remaking it so that he will have a place to sleep tonight. The bed has not been made in seventeen years, ever since Reginald altered her so that she would forget her son until he showed up again.)

-

Grace loves Diego despite the fact that she knows he killed her.

She loves Diego _because_ he is selfless, because he only killed her because of the pain he was in. She loves him because of his stutter and the way he always asked her to help, because he was always the most generous of his siblings.

She loves Diego because of the kindness in him that leads him to taking her off the grounds a few days after the Apocalypse doesn't happen, telling her in a gentle voice that she doesn't have to listen to what anyone tells her to do anymore. He takes her walking and she feels ground under her feet for the first time ever. She feels the uneven grass under her heels and she starts to understand what it is like not to be perfect, not to be constantly on the verge of breaking from pressure.

(Grace was the first to accept Diego after he came out. Reginald didn't even need to tweak her programming for her to recognize Diego as her son, not her daughter.)

-

Grace loves Allison despite the fact that she was the first to leave her on purpose, that she willingly left home and Grace for a life in L.A. 

She loves Allison because of her spirit, her willingness to do right. Allison was always going to be the first one to leave, from the very get-go- Allison was always the one who wanted out, wanted to see the world beyond the mansion. None of Grace's other children were ever as curious or demanding about the outside world as Allison was.

She loves Allison because she inherited so much of Grace's gentleness, that Allison is there for her siblings, in the end. When Reginald dies and Grace's children return home, she watches Allison seek to help her siblings and bring Vanya home.

(When Allison is ten-years-old, she starts to talk about the movies and how she wants to be like the women onscreen. Grace gives one of her knitted scarves to the milkman in exchange for a gossip magazine that she places on Allison's bed while her daughter is out fighting yet another crime.

Allison's smile when she'd seen the magazine had been one of the most beautiful things Grace has ever seen.)

-

Grace loves Klaus despite the fact that she doesn’t have one sober conversation with him from the day he turns fourteen until the day he returns from the Vietnam War.

She loves Klaus because of his flair, because he's always been a bit off-center. The drugs certainly added to the strangeness of his behavior, but he's always been the kid that pushed the dress code, who dyed his hair blond (just for kicks, he said) at age twelve and wore one of his sister's skirts for a week when he was ten.

She loves Klaus because he has always cared too much. When he was seven-years-old, he tried to cross stitch her a picture of the first spirit he saw. He failed miserably, but he had smiled a gummy smile at her (he had just lost one of his front teeth and the new one had yet to grow in) and told her that the woman was named Regina and that she had a smile just like Grace's

(The night Klaus had come in from the mausoleum, trembling and skin too pale and too cool to the touch, Grace had wrapped him in a blanket and sat next to him on his bed, reading him a bedtime story until he fell asleep.)

-

Grace loves Vanya despite the fact that she doesn't have powers.

She loves Vanya because of the attention she pays her violin, the way that Vanya can create art as beautiful as Grace's paintings. Vanya's music, however, is living art, able to change and become something new.

She loves Vanya because she is such an observant child. Reginald only reads Vanya's book once before slamming it into the shelf and never reading it again, but Grace picks up the book and reads it whenever Reginald is out and she is doing chores. Vanya's book is exacting, every detail laid out in precise, descriptive sentences.

(It haunts some part of her memory that Grace suspects Reginald deleted- when did Vanya begin to take those pills? When did that music start? How did her daughter go so quiet?)

-

Grace loves Ben despite the fact that he was never a fighter, a perfect hero like his siblings.

She loves Ben because he is gentle, because he died from being too soft. Ben was always a disappointing statistic to his father, but to Grace she was just her baby boy, who loved to read more than he wanted to fight.

(She loved him and she buried him, her blue dress as pressed and clean as it was when she wiped the blood from his face after his first mission.)

-

Grace loves Luther despite the fact that he is cold to his siblings. 

She loves Luther because he tries so hard to do his best. Luther has always been the leader, the hero, the sibling who took charge. He threw himself into every mission like it could be his last, and he'd nearly destroyed himself in his attempt to prove himself.

She loves Luther because he is willing to make up for his past mistakes. In the time after the Not-Apocalypse, he spends his time trying to help his siblings. He has late-night trips to a diner with Five, Allison, and Diego, reads and listens to music with Vanya, and tries his best to talk war stories with Klaus and Dave. He's trying to redeem himself for everything he did after Reginald's death, and she appreciates that.

(When Pogo and Reginald had wheeled Luther's body, Grace hadn't flinched at the bloodied mess that made up her son's torso. She'd already witnessed one son die- she was going to her very best to save this one as well.)

-

She even loves Eudora and Dave, despite the fact that the first time she meets them is when she's stitching up their dead chests. She loves them because they make her children happy, because they are willing to stay here using Klaus' powers in order to stay with Klaus and Diego.

She loves Eudora and Dave because they are gentle despite the wars they have fought, the crimes they've seen, the deaths they've died.

-

Grace loves her children too much. She loved them enough to name them, to give them an identity other than weapons. They were never just numbers to her, even before she helped them choose their names.

All she wants is for them to be happy and healthy, and she gives everything she has to make that happen.

-

Grace has never loved Reginald Hargreeves.

Grace is the perfect mother, but she was never the perfect wife.

Here’s the secret Grace Hargreeves never tells: Reginald never turned off her first aid programming. He didn't have to. She was programmed to protect her children, and Reginald was hurting them. Grace would rather him die than live, for the sake of her children. 

Grace never loved Reginald Hargreeves, and she doesn't cry when the man dies. Why would she? He was the monster who hurt her children, who made them cry and scream and doubt their own minds. He is the one who made them run, who hurt them, who _broke_ them. 

Reginald dies, and Grace is free to love and protect her children as she is meant to. She can help them heal. She won't break them like he did.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked Grace's POV. Luther's is nearly done, and I hope to have it out within the next two days.
> 
> Comments are appreciated, as always!


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